


it's something I've become

by escherzo



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (but it's not a big focus), Friendship, Gen, Mentioned one-sided Daisy/Basira and Jon/Martin, Mostly s4 compliant and therefore kind of sad, Roommates, Trans Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Trans Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Trauma Recovery, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:54:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24956425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escherzo/pseuds/escherzo
Summary: “Right. So, any ground rules?” Daisy asks, setting her duffel bag down and collapsing onto Jon's faded, sagging couch with a heavy sigh. “Things I should know about?”“I, ah. I'm sure if I do anything you don't like you'll let me know,” Jon says, shifting from foot to foot. It's not like Daisy is imposing, heagreedto let her stay in his flat, but it's been a long time since he's shared a space with anyone.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Comments: 17
Kudos: 264





	it's something I've become

**Author's Note:**

> this was just going to be a nice domestic "jon and daisy are roommates and also trans that's it that's the fic" and then I kept referencing s4 statements to get Daisy's dialogue right and it got all sad on me. the transness is mostly not a big focus, esp in Daisy's case.
> 
> title from 'glittering clouds' by imogen heap, which has big Hunt vibes

“Right. So, any ground rules?” Daisy asks, setting her duffel bag down and collapsing onto Jon's faded, sagging couch with a heavy sigh. “Things I should know about?”

“I, ah. I'm sure if I do anything you don't like you'll let me know,” Jon says, shifting from foot to foot. It's not like Daisy is imposing, he _agreed_ to let her stay in his flat, but it's been a long time since he's shared a space with anyone. Not since he and Martin were both sleeping in the Archives, and that felt different. More distractions. Less—intimate than having someone on his couch. 

She gives him an unimpressed look. “It's your flat. Nothing?”

“Not that I can think of,” he says. “Do you want a beer?”

“Please,” she says fervently, tugging her hair out of a ponytail and letting it fan out around her as she tips her head back onto the cushions, eyes closing. “Been a hell of a week.”

Jon hmms an agreement and busies himself getting two beers out of the fridge and popping them open, having something to do with his hands a welcome distraction. It's late, and the sun has long since disappeared below the horizon, and it's—strange, when he comes back into the front room and it's not dark and silent. 

“Thanks,” she says, and their fingers brush as he hands over the bottle. It's startling. He's not attracted to her, never has been, and knows the same is true of her, but it's been so long since he's had _any_ human contact that the feeling takes him completely by surprise. 

She looks him up and down critically, eyes narrowed, and then takes a drink. 

“Look,” she says finally, as he stands there, hovering, untouched beer in hand. “I'm not any good at this. But come here.”

He sits down beside her, still awkward and stiff, and she rolls her eyes and scoots closer, resting her head on his shoulder. It's—nice, actually. To be able to be close to someone that he can't hurt. She left a scar across the front of his neck that still throbs, sometimes, and if she wanted to, let herself give into the blood, she could kill him in an instant and they both know it. 

“You cook at all?” she asks into the silence. 

“I don't—need to eat, anymore,” he says, finally taking a sip of his own beer. “But I can cook. I, I like to cook, actually. It's been a while.” 

“Never been much of a cook,” she says. “But I can do the washing up, if you want.”

Jon smiles a little. 

“Also I'm trans, and if that's going to be an issue tell me now.” She says it all at once, quick and forceful, and Jon knows so well the _and if you have a problem with it, fuck you_ undertone. The bravado to mask fear. 

“I, um. Me too, actually.”

“... Shit,” she says, half a laugh, tension draining out of her all at once. She takes a deep breath and relaxes against him further. “Can't say I expected that.”

“I... don't tend to tell people,” he says. 

“Basira would be fine,” Daisy says. “In case you were wondering. Though she gets a little uncomfortable when I make dick jokes. Think she's not sure if she's allowed to laugh.” 

Jon chokes on his beer. She grins, quick and sharp, and pats him on the back, and he finds himself smiling back. 

It's—nice. He wasn't expecting all of this to be so nice.

*

“We should go to the shops after work,” Daisy announces the next morning, wandering around his kitchen in pyjama shorts and a t-shirt so weathered with age it's barely readable, but Jon thinks it might have once been a Spice Girls shirt. She opens a cupboard, frowns into it, opens another one. “Do you have _anything_ in here?”

“... tea?” Jon offers, shuffling around her to get to the kettle. “Milk in the fridge. I don't think there's much else.” 

She reaches into the top cupboard and pulls out a packet of biscuits he doesn't even remember he had, raising an eyebrow at them and turning the packaging over to try and find an expiration date. 

“Well,” she says finally. “These are going in the bin.” 

“I... think Martin gave me those,” Jon says, after a moment. “Before everything.” 

The look she gives him is faintly pitying, and he flushes. “I can't reach that shelf,” he says, defensive. “I didn't remember they were up there. You can, uh... you can get rid of it.” He busies himself getting mugs together and pouring the two of them tea, very deliberately not looking her in the eye. 

“Mhm.” She puts the packet back up onto the shelf. 

*

The Archives are as quiet as ever. Basira is nowhere to be seen—she said, when they last went out for drinks, that she would be talking to “her contact” today--and Melanie is curled up in a chair beside one of the assistant's desks, reading intently through a book. She gives them the barest of nods as they walk by. Lukas's presence hangs heavy over everything; even on the way in, past the library staff, it felt like they were the only ones in the world, and there is a faint fog at the end of every empty hallway. Jon shivers and pulls his cardigan tighter around himself, trying to ward off the chill it brings.

“Still don't like it,” Daisy says, shifting closer to him, and he nods. “Thought I'd be used to it by now, but.” 

“Yeah,” Jon says quietly. “Are you going to stay out here with Melanie?”

“Think so. You'll be alright?”

He nods. “I don't think he can hurt me. The rest of you... I'm not as sure.” He doesn't say _stay close to her_ , but he doesn't need to. As much as Daisy alternates between wanting companionship and rankling at the idea of being babysat, she's not inclined to wander off. And Melanie is in a complicated place right now herself. 

He closes his office door behind him and tries to settle in. His back is hurting again this morning, a side effect of the missing ribs he's starting to think might be permanent, and he pulls the blanket off the back of his chair as he settles in, wrapping it around himself and tucking his feet up under him as he sits. On mornings like these, he's uncomfortably aware of the physicality of himself, of the twinges of burns and cuts and holes and missing bones, the sharp juts of his knees and elbows, the ache in his thigh from his shot this morning when the muscle of his thigh spasmed at the wrong moment. Last year, Martin would have come in and seen him trying to get comfortable and failing and would have brought him tea and some paracetemol. 

He sighs and shuffles through his papers to find the statement that's calling out to him loudest. No one will be coming to bring him tea now, and it's best to just lose himself in the work instead. 

_Stop moping,_ says the Daisy that lives in his head, and he huffs, shifts in place one last time, and starts to read. 

*

“Jon,” Daisy says sharply, grabbing his shoulder. “Where are you going?”

Jon blinks back into awareness. There's a middle-aged man at the other end of the aisle, comparing two boxes of oatmeal, with a round face and thinning hair and a badly-fit polo shirt, and he has a story for Jon, and Jon was halfway to walking right up to him and hadn't even noticed. Hadn't even thought to stop himself. 

“He, I, I.” Oh, god. “We should go.”

“Just turn around,” Daisy says, slow and calm, and she takes his hand. “Don't need cereal. You're not gonna talk to him. What's the next thing on the list?”

The list? The list—Jon is still clutching the grocery list in one hand, half-crumpled but still readable, and he lets himself be led to the next aisle. “Flour. We need flour,” he says, his voice a shaky wreck. 

“Right, well, I don't know what kind, so you'll need to help me. Is this the right one?” She holds up a bag. 

“The other one,” Jon says. He takes a deep, shuddery breath. “The blue one. And we'll need yeast, I have some in my freezer but it's been in there since I was in Research, so I don't know that it's still going to be any good—yes, that one's fine—and to make the recipe properly we should get honey instead of sugar, and--” 

It's comforting to ramble. She rolls her eyes a little as he carries on, but doesn't stop him, and he tries to stop thinking about the man in the polo shirt. It almost works. 

She doesn't let go of his hand.

*

Jon hasn't cooked with anyone since his grandmother died. The realization comes to him abruptly as he's halfway through dicing onions, and it's not just the oils that make him start to tear up. He looks up at Daisy and tries to swallow past the lump in his throat, and she pauses in struggle with the potato peeler and looks back. 

“Are you... okay?”

He nods. “Just—it's been a while. Since I've done this.”

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “For me too.”

“I thought you didn't cook?”

“Not cooking, just--” she waves a hand at the two of them and turns back to the potatoes. “I was alone a long time in there. How do you make this _work_.” Her words turn into half a growl and she stops herself, takes a deep breath. 

“It's alright,” Jon says, wiping the tears away from his eyes and shifting over to the other side of the table. “Here. You hold it like this, press in a little—I think you might be pressing too hard—and pull down. Don't try to do it too fast.” He hands her back the peeler and starts shifting the onions to one side of the cutting board to make room for the peppers, and she tries again, slower this time. 

“Basira thinks I'm a liability now,” she says into the quiet. “She won't say it to my face, but we both know it.” She finishes the first potato, sets it aside, starts in on a second, and she digs the peeler in hard as she says it. 

“I don't think that, for what it's worth,” Jon says, not looking up at her. 

“She's practical. Always has been. And what good am I if I'm not a weapon she can use?” She takes a deep breath, her words wavering. “She trusted me. She can't do that anymore, and she's right not to.”

“You're a person, not a tool.” Jon turns away and ducks down to start sorting through pans. “And she does care about you. She just--” 

“She wants a tool. She's never really wanted me as--” Daisy cuts herself off, and Jon doesn't need the Eye to know that that ends with _never really wanted me as a person_. “Not much of a person, anyway.” 

“You don't have to be human to be a person,” Jon says. “It's going to take her some time to adjust to... to how things have changed, that's all. You're recovering. She knows that. But I am sorry.” 

“Yeah,” Daisy sighs. “...Christ, now I'm the one swanning around being all sad. Do you want these potatoes chopped too?”

“Cubed, please,” Jon says, hunting through the newly-stocked cupboards to find the oil. “Do you want to turn on the Archers?”

“I thought you hated the Archers.”

“I'll manage.” Jon gives her a small smile and she sets her knife down to go fiddle with the dials on the ancient radio in the kitchen window. 

*

“Making tea, do you want anything?” Daisy asks, and Jon startles upright in bed, tape player still clutched in his hand. “... What are you doing?”

There's not much point in lying. He sighs and hits play again, and Martin's soft, hesitant voice fills the room. “And I just—felt like it might help. He's always recording, and I thought it, it might help him... find his way out.” Jon hits pause before he has to hear Peter's voice again, hear his response, and he knows his eyes are wet. 

“I found this this morning,” Jon says. “On my desk. It—the rib, it didn't get me out. Martin did.”

“Come on,” Daisy says, offering him a hand up, and he lets her lead him to the kitchen, where she busies herself putting the kettle on, getting out the mugs. “The rib—you said it when we were... getting out, but you never explained it.”

“Thought I had,” Jon says, settling into one of the kitchen chairs. “I had an... anchor, when I went into the coffin. Thought if I left a part of myself behind on the outside I could use it to find my way out. Something I'm connected to.” 

She adds a splash of milk to each cup and shifts his across the table to him. “One of your ribs.”

“Had Jared Hopworth pull it out of me,” Jon says with a humorless laugh. “Hurt like hell. He took the other one as payment.” 

“Not very connected to your body,” she says, sitting across from him and taking a sip from her own mug. “Not as far as I've seen anyway.”

“... You're not wrong,” Jon admits after a moment. He's spent so long trying to not think about his own body. About how it works, about the ways in which it—doesn't work. On bad days, he doesn't even recognize it in the mirror as his own. “I don't know why I was so sure it would work, now. But the tape recorders we found, when we climbed out... Martin put them there. He got me out.” 

He stares down into his mug for a long moment. 

“He's working for Lukas, not dead,” Daisy says.

“He doesn't want to see me anymore. He's made that clear.”

“Doesn't want to, or can't?” 

“I don't know.” Jon sighs. “Probably can't. But he's doing something stupid, and dangerous, and he won't let me _help_.” 

“He's not ready to lose you again. Basira's treating me like a china doll too. Same thing, I think.” Daisy pauses for a long moment, studying him. “... You've got it bad, huh.”

“No, I, I--” Jon starts, reflexive, and then stops himself. “... Oh, God. I do, don't I.” He stares down at his hands. He's in love with Martin. He's been in love with Martin, and hadn't even noticed. “Stupid. _Stupid_. I realize it _now_ , after I've already lost him.” 

“Haven't lost him yet. And I get it.”

“You do?”

Daisy smiles a little, but it doesn't reach her eyes. “When I climbed out of the coffin, I saw Basira, and the only thing I could think was _you were what I wanted to see most the whole time I was in there_. And now I'm—a liability, to her.” 

“... Fuck,” Jon says.

“Yeah,” she agrees. She takes a long sip from her mug and sets it down. “Want to help me shave my head?”

“Sorry, what?” Jon blinks.

“Might be a good distraction. When it's—all over my face like this, feels like being trapped in again. Thought it would be fine, before, harder to ignore now.”

“... Yeah, alright,” Jon says. “I think I've got clippers in the bathroom.” 

*

Jon startles awake all at once. It's the middle of the night, the clock at his bedside reading 3:42 AM, and he's curled into a ball, his blankets and sheets a tangled mess around his legs. For a long moment, he's not sure what woke him, and then he hears it again. A scream from the front room, strangled and hoarse. He's up on his feet before he knows it, half-tripping on sheets as he makes his way out of the bedroom, fumbling through the dark. 

“Daisy,” he says, and then louder when he doesn't get a response. “Daisy!” 

Still nothing, and he switches on the light. Her eyelids twitch, but she's still asleep, hands wrapped around her own throat, making little whimpering noises. He kneels down beside the couch and slowly, hesitantly, reaches out and pulls her hands away, trying not to startle her. “Daisy,” he says again. “Daisy, wake up.” 

She blinks awake slowly, brow furrowed in confusion. “Jon?”

“You were screaming.” 

She takes in a shuddery breath. “Just the coffin again. Everything closing in on me. Can't move. Can't breathe. Just alone in the dirt, and all there is is the quiet. The quiet and the singing ” 

“You're out,” he says, trying to help her sit up. “You got out.”

“Yeah. You got me out.” 

“Yeah.” Jon hesitates. “Do you—uh. Is there anything I can do?” 

“Just sit with me a little while?” she asks, and he nods, settling in on the couch beside her. She puts a hand to her own chest and takes deep, slow breaths, feeling her chest rise and fall, her head on his shoulder. 

She drifts back to sleep, snoring faintly, and Jon wraps the blanket around them both and closes his eyes, letting the dreams take him too. 

*

“Daisy,” Jon says, twisting his hands together. “I need your help.” 

He's hungry. He's so hungry he can hardly think. The statements he's had this week haven't been enough, and there's a yawning, gaping void in him that longs to be filled with knowledge that he's trying desperately to ignore, and he can hardly walk with the force of the feeling. 

“Mm?” she says, looking up. She's sprawled out on the couch, halfway through one of Jon's books, but as soon as she sees the look on his face she sets it down. “What is it?”

“My--” Jon holds out his hands so she can see the way they're shaking. He can't get them to hold steady. “I need to do my shot today but my hands, I, uh. I don't think I can.” 

“Getting bad for you too?” she asks, and he nods. She's been getting weaker, too. Less able to get through her daily workouts, more prone to staring off into space for long periods of time, lost in her own fight with the blood. Sometimes they sit at the kitchen table, trying to get through a meal and all they can do is look at each other, the only time they can let the raw hunger show in its entirety. 

“Right,” she says, pushing herself up onto her feet. “Tell me what you need me to do.” 

Jon leads them to the bathroom and strips down to his boxers, sitting down on the closed lid of the toilet. “Vial's in the cabinet behind the mirror, needles are under the sink. I don't think I can get them without dropping them. Alcohol swabs should be next to the needles. Think I should have a few left.”

Daisy nods and starts washing her hands, quick and businesslike. “Just a normal injection, right? I've done those. What's the dose?”

“Mililiter. Tips on the needles aren't tightened so you'll need to do that.” 

“Where am I doing this? Arm? Thigh?” She has done this before – she goes through the process quick, and he doesn't have to tell her to inject air in or how to get the bubbles out. 

“Outside of the thigh. I can help with that part.” He takes the alcohol swab she hands him and tears it open with shaking hands, cleaning off the spot, and then squeezes the muscle of his thigh. “Here.” 

She doesn't give him time to second-guess, just kneels down beside him and sinks the needle in at the spot he showed her, pulling back to check for blood before pushing down on the plunger. “Need a bandage?” she asks, pulling the needle out and wiping the spot with the alcohol swab again. It's strangely vulnerable—Jon hasn't had someone help him with this since he was in uni, with a nurse teaching him how for the first time. 

“I don't usually bother,” Jon admits. “It... doesn't take me long to heal, anymore.” 

She nods and stands back up, and just like that, it's done. 

“Alright?” Daisy asks.

“Yeah,” Jon says, closing his eyes and letting the feeling sink through him. It's always a little bit like settling into a warm bath, after. He's never figured out if that's psychological or if there's something else to it. “Thank you.” 

“I'm hungry too,” she says quietly, averting her eyes as he gets his trousers back up. “I get it. You'd do the same for me.” 

Jon nods. He would, without hesitation. He might have to someday.

*

“You know what I did, don't you,” Daisy says, once, cutting chicken away from the bone as Jon bustles around the kitchen, gathering the rest of the ingredients for the curry. “When I was police.”

“I've seen some of it,” Jon says, not looking at her. “Not all, but.”

“Basira wants me to hunt again,” Daisy says. “She's seen how thin I've gotten. How little of me is left. And I, I can't, and you know why I can't. Like I said, I've made my choice. Whatever that ends up meaning. But.” 

“But?”

“I can't tell her how hard it is. But it's _hard_. It hurts all the time. I think about it every moment. Every day.” 

“I know,” Jon says. “I know. We'll figure it out.”

“I want to keep fighting,” she says, staring down at the ground, “but I'm so tired.” 

“Put down your knife for a moment?” Jon asks, and Daisy blinks at him in confusion but complies. He steps forward, taking a deep breath, and reaches out to pull her into a hug. He's never been a hugger. Can think of two, maybe three people he's hugged in his whole life. But Daisy relaxes into it like her strings have been cut, and so he stays there, arms around her, hands stroking slow up and down her back, and doesn't let go when she starts to shake. 

“We just need to keep fighting,” he says, pulling back enough to rest his forehead against hers. “Both of us. We'll figure it out. For now let's—cook dinner, and listen to the Archers, and try to not think.”

It won't _solve_ anything. But maybe that's not the point right now. For now, they're alive, and they're fighting, and whatever healing there is to be found, they can find it together. 

“You hate the Archers,” Daisy says.

“Mm,” Jon says, letting himself smile a little. “You know, I think it's actually growing on me.”


End file.
